Hello: It is obvious that you are certainly having a hard time with your Hospice services. I own a non-medical home care company in Nashville area, and have found Caris and Alive Hospice to be absol
...Read MoreHello: It is obvious that you are certainly having a hard time with your Hospice services. I own a non-medical home care company in Nashville area, and have found Caris and Alive Hospice to be absolutely WONDERFUL to deal with. I suggest you check to see if either has an office serving your area. You do NOT have to keep the hospice company you have now. You can call other companies to send their social workers and/or admissions nurse out to talk with you, then YOU CHOOSE the company you want. In most cases, if you call early in the day, they will send someone to talk with you that same day, or no later than the next day. Sometimes, if documents are obtained from your father's doctor quickly, service can begin the same or next day, also. They move fast to provide care when someone is in need. By whatever route you became hooked up with that company ( usually a doctor's or hospital's recommendation) you absolutely, positively do NOT have to continue with them. The choice us entirely yours. The new company you choose will provide documents for you to sign to have your father's records transferred to them. Hospice provides comfort, the BEST medical care available, and it sounds like the company you have is not the norm within that profession. I have found hospice professionals to be the BEST medical home care providers, when a patient can qualify for hospice. Also, people should not wait until right before death to sign up for hospice. The sooner your doctor will sign the documents to qualify your loved one, the sooner you will have the BEST of the BEST medical home health care. Hospice does not usually endorse someone being hospitalized if death is impending, but IF there is an accute condition that will improve with brief hospitalization, you can make your own decision to take your father to the hospital. Just do it and don't consult hospice until after he is admitted. Once he is released home, hospice service can be reinstated. Having hospice care is almost like having a private doctor making home calls, though, and you can often obtain prescriptions and treatment modifications at home through them, without taking your father to the hospital. You can take him to his doctor anytime you want to, also, even though they may discourage that, also. They are available to provide much more for him at home than he can get with regular home health, and you should be sure to ask for as much as they can provide before going to the doctor or hospital, because that is actually not necessary, because they will provide so much help and products at home. One thing about putting your father in the hospital, if he is having troubl breathing --- I am wondering if he is in conjestive heart failure of has a build-up of fluids in his lungs. One thing to always keep in mind is that when and if you take him to a hospital, they will hook up iv's and begin pumping large amounts of fluids into him, further resulting in increased fluid in the lungs, which they usually then order lasix to pull the fluid off. SO, they end up making a bad problem worse. If your father is having breathing difficulties, his heart function is probably declining and/or his lung function, also. The body simply wears out as it gets older and older, and nothing significant can be done to stop that process, once it is underway, which may well be what your father is experiencing. That is where hospice tries to help families understand that it is often kinder to the patient to let his body proceed through its natural slowing processes, instead of torturing them with hospitalization, needles, noise, bad food, and the sheer misery of being away from home and in a cold hospital full of strangers, antibiotic resistant bacterias and where he does NOT want to be. Be very cautious of hospitals and rehab facilities. I have seen three patients already in 2010 who came out of facilities with MRSA infections, and one of them died three weeks later of complicatins of the infection, after three weeks of iv antibiotics, high fever, total loss of appetitie, force feeding, eventually her heart just gave out due to the strain. MRSA is a bacteria that is becoming rampant in facilities and is very hard to stop, once it takes hold on someone. Few, if any, antibiotics are effective in killing it, and the infection often becomes systemic, resulting in death. Keep that in mind and do not take anyone you care about to a hospital or care facility, unless there is absolutely NO CHOICE, because you are exposing them to a soup of dangerous bicrobiological organisms in those places. You can receive regular respite that Medicare will pay for. Depending on your state's medicaid waiver/CHOICES program, you should be able to have someone come into your home for several days at a time to provide that respite. Check with your Area Agency on Aging Counselor to learn all assitance of which you can take advantage. Keep on keeping on. I know a 65 year old man who moved in with his mother, when he was 50, and, as an only child, was her ONLY caregiver for 15 years. She had Alzheimer's disease and was a stoke victim who was bedridden, incontinent, and totally non-responsive for 8 of those 15 years, except she would eat voraciously when food was put to her mouth. What a blessing that she had the pleasure of enjoing the taste of food up until the day she recently died. Food was the ONLY enjoyment in her life those final 8 years, and the amazing son would not blenderize her food, because he said mashing it with a fork made it more like natural chewing than turning it into pureed glop. He would not resort to liquid nutrition, for the same reason. He said as long as she would take the food from a spoon, he would see to it that she had good baked fish and sweet potatoes and peaches and cottage cheese and the things he knew she loved. She died several hours after eating a meal loving bought at a local restaurant and carefully mashed by hand, with a fork. What an amazing man to observe and inspiration to follow. He never took any formal respite, but was smart enough to go outside into fresh air and play the piano every day. He created his own private respite moments right at home, and survived the long orderal with his spirit and determination strong and healthy. I met him at year number 12 of his trial, and watched in awe as the years continued, and so did his smile and dedication to the woman who gave him life. How on earth can people lock away the man or woman who created them, just because they reach a point in life when they need help and are unpleasant to be around. We sure weren't pleasant, when we were screaming babies pooping in our diapers and later pitching temper tantrums and later causing teen challenges. There is something terribly wrong with the American baby boomer society that justifies not taking care of our own parents, because we want to work to have more money to spend, or time to enjoy our hobbies or just watching tv at home. There IS no honest justification for rejecting our parents and pushing them away as unlovely and unloved in nursing homes, after they have raised us and nurtured us and lived out the good years of their lives. Jobs and hobbies and what we WANT to do can wait. The people who gave us the very life we live, that allows us to breath the air we breath, deserve for us to put our own lives aside, like they did for the 18 years or so they raised us, and care for them, when they can't care for themselves. You are doing what is right and are earning t